A Year in Reading: Emily St. John Mandel

Related Books:

1.Lars Iyer’sWittgenstein Jr. is the only book I read twice this year. It took me much longer than usual to write the review, because I was afraid I wasn’t doing the book justice. It is an absolutely exquisite, elegant novel, with a cadence and rhythm all its own.

2.
I picked up the galley of Michel Faber’sThe Book of Strange New Things with low expectations, because it was just one of those random books that arrive on my doorstep every day and aliens and interstellar travel aren’t usually my thing, and found one of the best books I’ve ever read. It’s about a Christian missionary on an alien planet, and it’s a love story, and the last line destroyed me.

Some months later in London I was signing stacks of books in the basement of the wonderful Goldsboro Books, which specializes in signed first editions, when the proprietor wandered downstairs with the Goldsboro edition of The Book of Strange New Things, an exquisite object in white and gold. I am generally immune to the charms of signed first editions, but I ordered it when I returned to New York. A few weeks later, an editor in New York sent me a finished copy of the American version, and now the two hardcovers sit next to one another on my bookshelves, and usually I am ruthless about preserving bookshelf space, but it is impossible to dispose of either edition.

3.Elena Mauli Shapiro’s second novel, In The Red, was left out in the rain by a UPS delivery guy. By the time it reached me it had turned into a swollen, rain-warped thing. I brought it indoors and let it dry for a few days before I read it.

Shapiro’s novel is spectacular. It’s a dark story about a bright young woman’s descent into a criminal underworld, realism interlaced with fairy tales. The protagonist is the kind of woman who we’re used to seeing as arm candy in gangster films, the kind of woman whose main jobs are to be beautiful and to not notice what’s going on around them.

The book is an expert meditation on money, morality, and belonging, and I found it mesmerizing. I tried to champion it on tour. That was the book I named when people asked what I’d read recently that I’d recommend, unless they asked about books that have science fictional overtones, in which case I went with the Michel Faber.

4.The book I loved most this year was J.M. Ledgard’sSubmergence. Without reservation, I would call Ledgard’s novel a masterpiece. It opens in Somalia, 2012, with a British spy imprisoned by jihadists in a windowless room. Far away, on a distant northern sea, a biomathematician is preparing to descend by submersible to the ocean floor; her area of expertise is the Hadal zone, which encompasses the very deepest parts of the ocean. The imprisoned man and the biomathematician met some months earlier, and are in love; they are hopelessly far apart, but their thoughts return to one another as they go about their days.

When you consider that the Hadal zone exists in trenches and was named for Hades, unexpected parallels between their situations begin to emerge. It’s a book about, well, submergence; a man sealed into a prison from which he might not emerge, a woman descending into the inhospitable dark.

The Radiance of the King, by Camara Laye, arrived in my mailbox one day, courtesy of some benefactor. Its unaggressive length (279 pages) enticed me just to pick it up and read it, and now I’m eager for time to allow me to read it again.
The story concerns Clarence, a shiftless and fairly useless white guy, adrift in Africa. Blinded and befuddled by haughtiness, ensnared in gambling debts, Clarence demands to be brought to the King, into whose service Clarence assumes he will be taken. Several roguish African guides conduct Clarence south, where the King is expected to appear, some day. And in the village where Clarence is parked to wait for the King, Clarence is sold, for a use - historically hilarious - that we come to understand much sooner than he himself does.
Justice, humility, self-deception, degradation, grace, the acquisition of some small wisdom, and the complex relationships between them are among the matters that are explored, with great subtlety, over the course of Clarence’s journey, but no description of the book’s content nor speculation on its purposes can begin to suggest the pleasure of reading it. This resides in the author’s wit, charm, finesse, and originality, and in his elegant, vividly imagistic prose, gorgeous even in translation from its original French, shining and breathing with vitality.
Camara Laye was 26, we learn from Toni Morrison’s introduction to this New York Review of Books reissue, when he wrote Le Regard du Roi. It is his only work of fiction, though he wrote autobiographical works, journalism, and plays. He was born in Guinea, studied automobile engineering in France, and died at the age of 52.
More from A Year in Reading 2011Don't miss:A Year in Reading 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005The good stuff:The Millions' Notable articlesThe motherlode:The Millions' Books and ReviewsLike what you see?Learn about 5 insanely easy ways to Support The Millions, The Millions on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr.

4 comments:

Thank you for writing this. I love your suggestions. I own The Book of Strange New Things, but I had been putting off reading it. Now I am going to get to it fairly soon. And I downloaded Submergence to my Kindle, and I can’t wait to start it. I typically don’t read modern fiction, but this post has given me some great suggestions!

I think ‘Submergence’ has received more attention in the US than it has over here(England). it is shockingly good. if McEwan, Amis or Barnes had written it the English critics would have been filling their pants.

If I’m not reading at least two books at a time I’m failing somehow. And yet, my to-read pile this year never seemed to dwindle. There’s no real strategy to what I will read. I’m not a snob about it. I’ll read everything from speculative fiction to young adult to poetry. When a book I’m reading strikes a chord, I feel it so violently that I want to throw the book across the room. The selections below are just a sample of what moved me to extreme emotions this year:
The Transmigration of Bodies by Yuri Herrera
When I finished reading this slim novel, I immediately wanted to read it again. Then, I wanted to read it in its original Spanish and locate all of Herrera’s works. The Transmigration of Bodies is bleak, hilarious, and so full of grit. Herrera is one of Mexico’s most exiting novelists and I eagerly await his next.
The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma
“We went wild that hot night. We howled, we raged, we screamed.” The first two lines of this young adult novel pulled me right in. The Walls Around Us is a ghost tale with prose so beautiful and images so visceral I wanted to protect the young girls from the pain depicted on the pages.
Certain Dark Things: A Novelby Silvia Moreno Herrera
How do you subvert the vampire story? You set it in Mexico City and replace the stereotypical bloodsuckers with feuding families of vampire narcos. This is an exciting new world of gangster vampires that’s full of suspense and emotion.
Kendra by Coe Booth
I love flawed characters that make questionable decisions. Kendra is such a character, a 14-year-old who desperately wants to connect with her very young mother. Sexuality is handled with brutal honesty in this young adult novel. Booth also depicts the Bronx, New York, my hometown, with such love and authenticity.
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
This book came with me on my vacation to Hawaii. The island was the perfect setting to get lost in Chee’s lush world. Every single detail transported me to 19th-century France with its lavish costumes and baroque drama.
In between novels, I usually turn to poetry. These collections sit by my nightstand. Right before I go to sleep, I randomly open a page and read with the hope that the images evoked by these poets will seep into my dreams.
Song of the Simple Truth: The Complete Poems of Julia De Burgos
Burgos is one of the most important Puerto Rican poets. Her work is revolutionary. She has such a strong influence on me that her writing makes an appearance in my young adult novel, The Education of Margot Sanchez.
Reliquaria by R.A. Villanueva
Villanueva’s poems seem like prayers, calling out to the past. I’m also attracted to how he plays with Catholicism and its colonial nature in language.
Our Lady of the Crosswordby Rigoberto González
González has such a way with words. His poetry is packed with sexuality and culture. The chapbook is also small enough for my purse and travels with me.
More from A Year in Reading 2016Do you love Year in Reading and the amazing books and arts content that The Millions produces year round? We are asking readers for support to ensure that The Millions can stay vibrant for years to come. Please click here to learn about several simple ways you can support The Millions now.Don't miss:A Year in Reading 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005

As a half-Japanese kid growing up in the Northeast, I masqueraded quite successfully as another disenfranchised suburban Caucasian dude, angry more at being nowhere special than for any definable reason. But two historical phrases instilled unease: “Pearl Harbor” and “The Bataan Death March.” The former’s nasty ethnic stereotypes of the Japanese character—sneaky, cowardly, backstabbing—made me wary of my mother and half of my family, all of whom seemed otherwise sane and trustworthy to me. And the latter left me cold: How could such mindless barbarity even happen? One of these days, I used to think, I’ll be unmasked—as one of them.
Historical anecdotes have very significant drawbacks, of course. In the name of brevity and clarity, they reduce ambiguous human symphonies to palatable and memorable riffs.
But with hindsight and the power of narrative, writers have the power to unlock and conduct mystery back to life. Michael and Elizabeth M. Norman, in Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and its Aftermath, revive the rich choral horror of what seems banal at first: a sixty-six day march of American and Filipino POWS to prison camps in the Philippines, and eventually, Japan, beginning in 1942. By tracing the story of one very much alive American survivor, the now-artist Ben Steele, whose illustrations enhance the book’s capacious stories, and by interviewing American, Filipino and Japanese participants, the Normans beautifully tell a story about a nightmarish event. The Allied POWs were abandoned early on by President Harry Truman and General Douglas MacArthur, largely because the US was preoccupied by the war in Europe and willing to overlook the fates of 76,000 of their own; and the Japanese soldiers, emboldened by a military dictatorship and brutalized into madness by their commanders, successfully dehumanized their booty. The POWs were no different from the prisoners at Abu Ghraib: Spoils for the despoiling.
Tears in the Darkness and pal Jake Adelstein’sTokyo Vice, about the inner workings of the Japanese mafia and its collusive relationships with the FBI, serve as adequate bookends to my reading year: two books about the dangers of masquerading as anyone but yourself.
More from A Year in Reading